Interesting night tonight.. Not really quite sure just how I feel right now.
Tonight I had a Pastoral Council meeting at my church. These are monthly meetings held on the 1st Monday, and it seems that whenever Pastoral Council Monday rolls around it really zaps the energy out of me.
First of all, I’m chairperson of the Pastoral Council, and while it sounds pretty cool and important, this is really something that I reluctantly accepted. Believe it or not, I’m the only 3rd year member on there (Pastoral Council members are term-limited to 3 years at my church), and we had a chairperson throughout the first-half of the year but she had to resign because she was going back to school in Denver and her classes were taking up all of her time, so I as the Vice/Co-Chair reluctantly accepted the position. I even tried to back-pedal out of it when they offered it to me, talking about how I’m not sure if a student should be chair of the Pastoral Council, how I don’t have a lot of time and so-forth, but it still got thrust upon me unfortunately. So I’ve been trying to make an honest effort out of it, but truth be told I’m not really passionate about the inter-politics & (lack of good) decision making at my church that’s been going on for the last years. And then when it’s time to get something done for the PC I’ve had the hard time making any time for it. I feel bad because I’m not giving the group a real honest effort, but at the same time my heart’s not really into it… It’s just one of those things.
The meeting went pretty well, it flowed alright and I tried to keep people somewhat on topic, but again it’s hard hearing some of the things at those meetings. It goes back to some of the struggles I blogged about back on May 12th – decisions about how they are (not) going to replace the Director of Campus Ministry position and all of that crap. When it got rehashed again it really made me upset.
At the end of nights like these I ask myself "Why am I still going to these meetings?" I’m really not getting anything out of it. I don’t really I’m making any valuable contributions. Do I really need to be here? Then I am reminded of a column that I read back in 2003, from Ron Rolheiser, a very wise priest that was called "Pentecost Happened at a Meeting". In his column, he reminds us:
"Pentecost happened at meeting and it happened to a community, to a church congregation assembled for prayer, to a family of faith gathered to wait for God’s guidance. Moreover it happened in a common room, a meeting room, in one of those humble, church- basement, type of rooms. It can be helpful to remember that."
He ends the column by saying that "When you don’t know what else to do, keep going to meetings." So I will keep doing that. I know that there’s a reason I should be at these meetings. What it is, I have no idea, but I will still hold that faith… But I still can’t help but wonder "Why me?"